Tag Archives: Tehran

As usual Pamela Geller, the courageous blogger from New York, is leading the way.

This post by Geller is about a number of things:

1. The American and European ruling clases are rowing in behind Islam. They are now supporting Islam as the new great hope for humanity.

The American and European ruling elites are now fully on the side of the Iranian Mullahs.

2. My reasoning about this is thus: If these elites are on the side of Islam and the Mullahs, which represses the Iranian workers, women and youth without any mercy, then this is not an accident. What then may be the reasons?

3. I suggest: They fear a collapse of their own system. They fear massive opposition to their rule from many sources. They also fear economic collapse given the debt which America is running on.

There is now a continual cover up of the issue of Islam especially in its attitude to Christians living in the Middle East. These Christians are being driven out.

The present Pope Francis is a Jesuit and he has proved to be basically a supporter of these Christians being driven out of the Middle East, from countries such as Iraq, because he has done hardly anything. FRANCIS IS RELATIVELY SILENT.

Pope Francis should have said that his Christian flock was being decimated by Islam and that the only thing Christians should do now is join with the Jews, and defend Israel as a haven for Christians and Jews against Sharia. He should have said that even not all can live in Israel, but if Israel falls … it will be the total end of Christians in the Middle East too.

What lies behind the EU in this article being such slavish supporters of the Iranian Hanging Mullahs? I think it is the same as the Vatican, the same as the American ruling class led at present by Obama (but whoever leads it is the same because all of them from Reagan to Carter were the same Antisemites), and I think that sameness quality is Antisemitism.

The real and actual history of the Left is NOT Antisemitic.

Karl Marx was not an Antisemite! Far from it! Karl Marx opposed the Anarchist Bakunin over this very issue. Karl Marx fought for Jews in Prussia to have full political rights. Just as the politically correct crowd did with the British poet Philip Larkin you can go over his private letters etc. and pick out one or two quotes. These gangsters, I mean intelectual gangsters, did that with Larkin to “prove” he was a racist. THAT is NOT history got it!

Those people who Pamela sometimes calls “leftist” are not of the historical left at all. Before we go any further in the anti-Jihad movement let us get historical accuracy on this. If we do not have historical accuracy we have nothing. Support www.4international.me and help us to get a theoretical journal running which will clear up these historical untruths

I am a socialist to the very nth degree and yet i opposed totally the Geneva deal with Iran. To further illustrate my position my comments opposing the deal were kicked off the Facebook Page of “Talk Radio Europe” also known as TRE, and it is a commercial and totally capitalist concern (it relies for existence on business adverts) and believe it or not it is owned by a Jewish man Martin Nathan.

People should not just follow the crowd but should start to have historical accuracy and general accuracy. I wish Pamela and Robert would be more careful in their terminology especially their use of the Word “leftist”.

(START ARTICLE HERE)

No halt to executions while EU delegation visits Iran

Stunning, 38 death sentences were carried out during a six day visit to Tehran by the European Parliament delegation ….. Europe comfortably reverts to it’s heinous past.

While oppositive activists in Iran consider “the current U.S. administration is among the weakest in U.S. history”.

No halt to executions while EU delegation visits Iran,” By Mosa Zahed, UPI, December 26, 2013 (thanks to Philip)

LONDON, Dec. 26 (UPI) — Last week a European Parliament delegation returned from a six-day visit to Tehran, the first official visit to Iran in more than six years.The five-member delegation was led by the chairwoman of European Parliament’s friendship delegation with Iran, Tarja Cronberg from Finnish Greens and included Cornelia Ernst, German communist; Isabelle Durant, Belgian Greens; Marietje Schaake, Dutch Liberals; and Josef Weidenholzer, Austrian Social Democrats.

During their Dec. 13-18 visit at least 38 death sentences were carried out official Iranian media sources said. This while many executions in prisons are conducted in secret and news of those is rarely released.

Many MEPs including those from the Group of the European People’s Party, the largest in the European Parliament, refused to go to Iran in protest of the country’s gross human rights violations.

Some analysts argue that this rare visit took place in the context of the Geneva talks, which are aimed at normalizing relations between Iran and the West by convincing the ayatollahs to give up their nuclear ambitions. However, others have pointed out that for the Iranian side, the ultimate goals of the Geneva talks remain breaking sanctions, forcing the West to accept a nuclear Iran and eliminating chances for regime change by the democratic opposition.

Opposition activists suggest that since “the current U.S. administration is among the weakest in U.S. history” Iran wants to use the opportunity to enhance its hegemony over the region and would thus warmly welcome any lifting of the crippling sanctions that have delayed its nuclear weapons ambitions.

They claim that by offering lucrative oil and natural gas contracts, the regime wants to intimidate the West, particularly the European Union, to ease the sanctions. Countries such as Sweden, traditionally seen as human rights advocates, have placed themselves first in line. Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt recently declared that he sees no problem in removing the sanctions as early as January. Other countries, such as Italy, have already sent foreign ministers to seize business opportunities if the sanctions are lifted.

To help the European delegation justify their visit, the Iranian Foreign Ministry took two former political prisoners, Nasrin Sotoudeh and Jafar Panahi, winners of the European Parliament’s prestigious Sakharov Prize, to the Greek Embassy in Tehran to meet with them discreetly.

Upon her return from Tehran, Cronberg made contradictory remarks in Brussels in favor of the “moderate” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. She praised him for keeping his “promise to improve human rights” by freeing a handful of political prisoners, something observers had stressed was part of his charm offensive before going to United Nations in September.

However, she failed to explain the twofold increase in executions during Rouhani’s term and instead defended him by saying that “the judiciary is not under his control.”

“So Rouhani is only responsible for the good things that his judiciary does and not the bad things!” a Twitter user replied to Cronberg after the news conference.

In her interview with the Persian section of Radio Free Europe, she said: “We have to bear in mind that Iranians say that their values are different from Europeans. This is true but we have to sit down and discuss these values and accept our differences … and we must bear in mind that in comparison with the European Union, religion plays a very important role in Iran. We’re a liberal society and Iran is a highly conservative society.”

Commenting on this, U.S.-based Iranian journalist and human rights activist Hassan Dai wrote on his blog: “No, you are not mistaken, these are not the remarks of Sadegh Larijani — Head of Iran’s notorious Judiciary, these are the words of Tarja Cronberg!”

The delegation chairwoman didn’t condemn the 450 executions since Rouhani became president and said: “When we discussed the executions with Iranian authorities, we realized that more than 80 percent of executions were in connection with drug-related offenses. They are working on this issue. … they do not intend to abolish the death penalty but are thinking about slowing down. I think that until here is a good sign.”

While in Tehran, Cronberg told EuroNews that she was impressed that women have “their own fraction” in the Iranian Parliament which “is an evolvement in the society.” No criticism was mentioned about the fact that only nine out of 290 members of the Iranian Parliament are women.

In her Brussels press briefing she said, “There is no regime change on the agenda, there is no revolution on its way but there is a step by step transformation.”

She also claimed that the regime has “equal rights for women in all their laws” and added “but because women were not breadwinners, it was natural that men had higher incomes.”

But, as the Iranian Penal code states, the life of a woman has half the value of a man’s. Article 300 of the code states that the “Deyeh” (blood money) of a Muslim woman is half of the “Deyeh” of a man. “A woman cannot leave her home without her husband’s permission, even to attend her father’s funeral” (Article 105 of the Civil Code).

“It is really an insult to all women rights activists to hear an EU parliamentarian lobbying for the mullahs in this way. Such comments will only give freer hands to the government to justify the institutionalized repression against women,” Mariam Amiri, rights activist in Amsterdam said.

Commenting on the visit to Iran, Kazem Mousavi, founder of Iran’s Green Party, said in a radio interview from Berlin: “One can conclude that according to these parliamentarians, human rights violations or their non-improvement are a result of values enshrined in Islamic and cultural beliefs of people in Iran and at the end of the day, the regime is only implementing the people’s ideals and values. So this repression and these executions are merely a cultural difference between the West and Iran and we should accept them for the time being.”

He added, “Given that the Left parties in Europe no longer have the socialist bloc of the past, for these European greens and socialists the last stronghold to defend their political principles, they assume, is to support the Islamic Republic of Iran, especially since they both share a common anti-American and anti-Israeli stance.

“Unfortunately the mullahs have managed to deceive them by portraying themselves as victims of Western hard-liners. So here the murderers become the victims!”

In an address broadcast live to Israel Sunday, President Obama falsely claimed the West’s nuclear deal with Tehran takes Iran’s uranium enrichment down to zero from its current 20 percent.

Obama made the false claim twice even though the text of the deal caps Iran’s uranium enrichment at 5 percent, a figure that could constantly leave the country two months away from the technical ability to build a nuke.

Obama was hosted for a forty-minute question-and-answer session at the annual Saban Forum at the Brookings Institute in Washington, D.C. The session was broadcast live on Israel’s Channel 2, the country’s largest television station.

Regarding the nuclear deal, Obama stated: “We have not only made sure that in Fordor and Natanz that they have to stop adding additional centrifuges, we’ve also said that they’ve got to roll back their 20 percent advanced enrichment. So we’re … ”

Host Chaim Saban interrupted and asked, “To how much?”

Saban was asking about the percentage Iran would be required to roll back its enrichment.

“Down to zero,” Obama stated. “So you remember when Prime Minister Netanyahu made his presentation before the United Nations last year?”

“The cartoon with the red line?” asked Saban.

Continued Obama: “The picture of a bomb – he was referring to 20 percent enrichment, which the concern was if you get too much of that, you now have sufficient capacity to go ahead and create a nuclear weapon. We’re taking that down to zero.”

In actuality, the six-month renewable interim deal requires Iran to cap its uranium enrichment at 5 percent. Iranian diplomats have repeatedly stated they will not give up the right to enrich uranium in any final deal.

Later on in his speech, Obama contradicted himself and conceded Iran would likely retain an enrichment capability in a final deal.

He said: “We can envision an end state that gives us an assurance that even if they have some modest enrichment capability, it is so constrained and the inspections are so intrusive that they, as a practical matter, do not have breakout capacity.

“Theoretically they might still have some [breakout capacity]. But frankly, theoretically, they will always have some because, as I said, the technology here is available to any good physics student.”

“Let us look at the current the facts on the ground. With Iran’s inventory of 20 percent enriched uranium, it would take about two weeks using 6000 IR-1 centrifuges, operating in tandem cascades, to produce enough weapons grade material for one nuclear device. If Iran uses three to five percent enriched uranium as feed material at all its currently installed 18,000 IR-1 centrifuges at Natanz and Fordow, the same result would be achieved in two months.

“The current agreement retains Iran’s fleet of more than 18000 IR-1 centrifuges. Operational restrictions are placed that allow 10,000 centrifuges to continue to enrich at up to 5 percent at any given point of time. These measures, together with a cessation of 20 percent enriched uranium production and conversion of the 20 percent-level stockpiles to oxides, extend the current breakout times to about two months.”

Meanwhile, in the session Sunday, Obama claimed the deal only opens the Iranian economy to a maximum of $7 billion in sanctions relief.

Stated Obama: “What we’ve done is we’ve turned the spigot slightly and we’ve said, here’s maximum $7 billion out of the over $100 billion of revenue of theirs that is frozen as a consequence of our sanctions, to give us the time and the space to test whether they can move in a direction, a comprehensive, permanent agreement that would give us all assurances that they’re not producing nuclear weapons.”

However, KleinOnline reported under the interim deal Tehran’s economy could be flooded with untold billions in sanctions relief and other gains, far more than the widely reported amount of $6 to $7 billion.

If Iran keeps its side of the bargain, the deal allows an increase in European Union “authorisation thresholds for transactions for non-sanctioned trade to an agreed amount.” No amount for the thresholds are provided in the text of the deal.

The agreement states the U.S. and EU will “enable the repatriation of an agreed amount of revenue held abroad.” No specific amount is delineated in the deal.

In one clause that could potentially free untold billions, the deal establishes a “financial channel to facilitate humanitarian trade for Iran’s domestic needs using Iranian oil revenues held abroad.” No cap is provided for the amount of revenue that could be made available.

An open-ended footnote states the “humanitarian” trade financial channel “would involve specified foreign banks and non-designated Iranian banks to be defined when establishing the channel.”

More sanctions relief spelled out in the text of the deal includes a Western agreement to:

Pause efforts to further reduce Iran’s crude oil sales, enabling Iran’s current customers to purchase their current average amounts of crude oil. For such oil sales, it suspends the EU and U.S. sanctions on associated insurance and transportation services.

Suspend U.S. and EU sanctions on Iran’s petrochemical exports, as well as sanctions on associated services, gold and precious metals.

Suspend U.S. sanctions on Iran’s auto industry, as well as sanctions on associated services.

License the supply and installation in Iran of spare parts for safety of flight for Iranian civil aviation and associated services.

License safety related inspections and repairs in Iran as well as associated services.

Not impose new nuclear-related U.N. Security Council sanctions.

Not impose new EU nuclear-related sanctions.

In the case of the U.S. administration, acting consistently with the respective roles of the president and the Congress, refrain from imposing new nuclear-related sanctions.

International talks over Iran’s nuclear programs resumed in Geneva yesterday amid the strident public opposition of Israel to the agreement being discussed and the continued threat of war against Iran. Negotiators for the P5+1 group (the US, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany) met yesterday and talks will continue today.

END WSWS QUOTE

This statement from these Fascists on wsws is what must be immediately contradicted. They represent not in the slightest Trotskyism, Leninism, Marxism. They are the words of Fascists who are using the cloak of being leftist to pursue what is Antisemitism.

What is the wsws doing here? Why would they be attacking Israel and supporting the Mullahs.

I have a picture on file of the Mullah regime executing at one go ten prisoners. The prisoners are standing on two benches at right angles, and they all have nooses around their necks. The prisoners are looking outward to our right to one point. I take it they are looking at somebody reading a hateful condemnation.

They may be petty criminals. They may be political fighters. I do not know but every instinct in my body makes me oppose these Iranian Fascists in this regime. But not the wsws.org!

Israel is pressing the US and its European allies to demand the complete dismantling of Iran’s nuclear facilities, including its uranium enrichment plants and heavy water reactor at Arak. Tehran has repeatedly denied unsubstantiated Western and Israeli allegations that it is seeking to build a nuclear bomb.

Speaking to CNN on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the proposed agreement as “an exceedingly bad deal,” adding that it was “no secret” that many Arab leaders held the same opinion. “To give the most dangerous regime of the 21st century the world’s most dangerous weapons is a big, big mistake,” he declared.

Netanyahu’s statements are utterly hypocritical. Israel not only has its own stockpile of nuclear weapons, but, unlike Iran, has a long history of military aggression against its neighbours. Netanyahu hinted once again that Israel was prepared to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, saying: “We’ve been around for about 4,000 years, the Jewish people, and we are not about to let ayatollahs with nuclear weapons threaten that.” END QUOTE

AND THERE IS MORE

I repeat from the above what these wsws fascists masquerading as socialists, even Trotskyists, (that is totally horrible) write

Tehran has repeatedly denied unsubstantiated Western and Israeli allegations that it is seeking to build a nuclear bomb.

But in answer to this THEY ARE. They are building Nuclear Bombs. The whole world knows it. Obama knows it very well. Every Tom Dick and Harry knows it.

Moreover the other argument the wsws use…Yes Israel has the Nuclear Bomb, and Israel thank goodness has the Nuclear Bomb, because the Jews have to defend themselves against Antisemitism.

This is not words. The wsws is not a Trotskyist movement. Leon Trotsky would spit on them…this wsws.

We on www.4international.me will build the alternative. Of all the issues in the world today the first issue for socialists is to defend the Jews of Israel from another Holocaust. That means by every means do not allow the enemy of the Jews get the Nuclear Weapon.